1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to materials size reduction and more particularly to systems and processes relating to the presizing of industrial materials by variably shredding and granulating liquefied materials prior to processing or recycling.
2. General Background
It is well known that a great many materials must be reduced or otherwise uniformly sized in order for them to be processed, recycled or transported. Various types of size reduction apparatus have been developed for this purpose. Large bulky objects for example are passed through shredders, hammer mills, chippers and the like as a method of coarse size reduction. Whereas, finer granular materials are passed through grinders and ball or roller mills The materials are often passed over screens to insure size uniformity, with non-conforming materials being sent back through the apparatus for reprocessing. This reprocessing causes flow restrictions during production often requiring over sizing of the apparatus or the use of multiple apparatus to compensate. Most material sizing apparatus such as grinders are configured for a specific product and a fixed discharge particle size. Such sizing apparatus are generally sold independently rather than as a system. Therefore, such equipment must be selected for an application based solely on its capacity and proven capability for sizing a particular material. Such grinders are simply not capable of handling a wide range of liquefied materials and providing a variably predictable particle discharge size without the use of screens or reprocessing. Therefore, systems which require conversion of high volumes of high quality materials at a minimum cost have not be possible with conventional apparatus.
It is therefore, an object of this invention to provide various systems which utilize unique technological apparatus which can be configured in a variety of ways to perform efficiently in a host of different applications.
It is also an object to provide high volume size reduction systems which are cost effective by reducing power consumption, utilize recycling techniques wherever possible and practical, and separate and recover as many high quality, sized, reusable materials as possible.